MULTIPLE VOICES FROM NATURE at Korzo in The Hague
A concert as part of the Basklarinet Festijn - Bass Clarinet Party - which is now in its fifth year.
The clarinet is well known in all types of music from Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto and Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet to the jazz of Benny Goodman and Sidney Bechet - and hands up who remembers Acker Bilk. The haunting clarinet in Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue provides some of its most memorable moments but who can name me a well-known piece of music that features the bass clarinet? OK, it has a solo in Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker and features in The Beatles’ When I’m Sixty Four, but name me another.
The bass clarinet makes a unique sound and ranges from a window-rattling low B♭1to its sweet high B♭5 which is not surprising considering it is over a meter in length. With all its chrome, springs and levers a bass clarinet is a thing of beauty which would not look out of place under the bonnet of a high performance sports car. However, nobody would claim the bass clarinet is the sexiest instrument in the orchestra. But perhaps there are those who think it is.
A group of about a dozen bass clarinet players in The Netherlands joined force to work together and they created the annual Basklarinet Festijn - Bass Clarinet Party - which is now in its fifth year. Spread over a number of weeks and performed in various venues, the festijn aims to show that the instrument is not the orchestra’s ugly duckling and deserves more attention.
Last night’s performance at Korzo in The Hague was entitled Multiple Voices from Nature and set out to explore how nature, humanity, and technology can find harmony through sound. It featured only one bass clarinet, beautifully played by Fie Schouten along with virtuoso cellist Katharina Gross. The duo has been playing together since 2022 and the two instruments complement each other, creating astounding harmonies and rich depths. For this concert the duo was augmented by electronics in the form of compositions by Janco Verduin, Peter Jakober and Kerwin Rolland/Fie Schouten.
The first piece, Janco Verduin’s From dusk till dawn: the hidden world of Pipistrellus Pipistrellus was played to a recorded soundtrack of aerial sounds. Verduin’s ambition was to “make the inaudible of the night audible” so we heard swifts making their way home as the sun sets and the bats that appear from nowhere at dusk swooping and squeaking in their quest for juicy flying insects. Their high-pitched sounds contrasted with the often luscious low frequencies that the two instruments are able to produce. But they weren’t just blown or bowed. Ms Schouten played the keys on her instrument without blowing into it creating the impression of flapping wings while Katharina Gross scrapped, tapped and scratched her cello to build an environment which echoed the transition from day to night.
Peter Jakober’s Werk was a much more ephemeral piece creating an electronic soundscape with which the two instruments played, establishing an almost hallucinatory experience, possibly best listened to with one’s eyes closed.
For the evening’s final piece Katharina Gross put aside her cello and French artist and performer Kerwin Rolland joined Fie Schouten on stage to play Multiple Voices which was created by the couple during a residency at Van Doesburg House in Paris. The composition, using mainly field recordings of water flowing and bubbling, again demonstrated the unique blend and hypnotic effect that can be achieved by combining acoustic and electronic music.
A fine concert in front of a disappointingly small audience in the Korzo’s smallest performance space. Looks like the bass clarinet has some way to go before it achieves the appreciation and acknowledgment it deserves. Michael Hasted 18th October 2025
The 5th Basklarinet Festijn runs until 23rd November at various venues around the country.